In a 1996 interview, Jauss admitted to joining the Nazi's Waffen-SS because he wanted to be part of history as it was unfolding. (Source.)

After the war, Jauss was a prisoner of war and was tried in the famous Nuremburg Trials, where he was found "not [to have] participated in criminal actions" (Source.)

Jauss's concept of horizons of expectations has a lot of fans. Critics have applied his ideas of multiple readership to many different cultural objects. One scholar used Jauss's ideas to examine how different cultures react to the death of a child. (Source.)

Jauss has been credited with revitalizing the international reputation of German Romance studies after the war. He believed that the scientific philosophy of positivism had really put a crimp in literary studies. (Source.)

In his scholarship after the war, Jauss made medieval writing sort of popular again. He pooh-poohed the idea that medieval writing wasn't relevant to modern readers. (Source.)